In law, under what circumstances can you sue and get the CURRENT price of the item bought NEW (i.e., how much it would cost to replace the item if you bought it today) and under what circumstances will you get the DEPRECIATED value for the item?

That was probably the case because the judge is awarding damages, not replacing the item that was stolen, destroyed, damaged, misused, blah blah blah.

This might not be an exact analogy but last year my daughter was making a left turn across traffic and a small truck hit her car at just about the rear wheel wells. Insurance covered the market value of the car, not the cost to replace it brand-new.

Depreciation is an accounting term used to estimate the annual expenses incurred when purchasing a productive asset. There are many ways to calculate annual depreciation, varied useful lives and a whole mess of depreciation methods used for tax purposes.

A judge MIGHT use the depreciation model to value a damaged or destroyed asset due to the lack of a way to estimate the actual value at the time of damage to the asset.

Under certain insurance property insurance policies, one might receive replacement value instead of market value depending on what is written into the policy and negotiated at the time the policy year begins.

SRM